Education Week staff writer Evie Blad explores some of the nonacademic issues that bear on students’ learning. Join her for insights, news, and analysis on a wide range of issues including school climate, student engagement, children’s well-being, and student behavior and discipline.

In the aftermath of the 2012 school shootings in Newtown, Conn., and subsequent acts of violence elsewhere, posts about school safety also drew great reader interest.

And, as schools take a broader look at equity, readers were also drawn to posts about how poverty is affecting schools and how schools can better tackle the non-cognitive issues students bring to the classroom, such as exposure to trauma and a lack of sleep.

"While schools in all sorts of communities have worked for years to tackle the effects of poverty for individual students, the Brookings report notes that concentrated poverty requires policy makers to tackle the 'double burden' of not only their poverty, but also the disadvantages of those around them. That may mean increasing reliance on models like community schools, which offer 'cradle-to-career' or 'wraparound' services, such as in-school health care, parenting interventions, and community outreach to ensure that their students can grow academically."

"About 88 percent of 3,459 food-service directors recently surveyed by Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said they needed additional equipment to adequately prepare meals. About 55 percent of respondents said they need infrastructure changes, like additional space for food storage and service. New school nutrition standards, which call for more fresh produce and grains, have fueled a need for upgrades, they said."

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that young people are especially susceptible to influence from others in this public health issue. Last night, as news of Williams' death spread, Education Week saw a spike in traffic to this commentary piece about schools' role in preventing suicide. This is clearly a concern to many folks who spend their time caring about kids. As educators, how can you counteract harmful messages your students may be receiving about suicide and steer them toward healthier conversations?"

"Allowing the myth that shooters 'just snap' to persist robs the public and the mental health community of chances to learn from attacks, gathering small pieces of insight that may further improve risk-assessment methods, a psychologist said."

"A federal appeals court has upheld the police use of a restraining hold on a 9-year-old student suspected of stealing an iPad from his school, though two judges called the police officer's actions 'regrettable' and a third judge lamented police tactics in schools by asking, 'Why are we arresting 9-year-old schoolchildren?' "

"High schools and middle schools should start at 8:30 a.m. or later to better sync schedules with students' natural sleep cycles, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a new policy statement published Monday. At the start of puberty, sleep-wake cycles shift two hours later, making it difficult for students to wake up as early as they did when they were younger, the statement says."

"Districts doing screenings, including a handful in Virginia and Texas, are asking newly enrolled students and students who fall ill at school about their travel history to determine if they've recently visited any of the African countries most heavily impacted by the virus, news reports say."

"Educators and policymakers should be mindful of the non-cognitive factors that affect a student's learning and of the nonacademic results that can stem from effective policy, an education association said Wednesday. To promote awareness of those inputs and outputs, ASCD, the Alexandria, Va.-based professional association, released its state-by-state snapshots that show a variety of 'whole child' data and policy recommendations."

"The link between actually showing up to school and doing well academically may seem pretty obvious to many educators, but the analysis provides a new examination of the extent to which the two correlate, the report says. That's in part because states define and measure chronic absenteeism differently, making it difficult to track and compare across the country. The self-reported NAEP data gives researchers a rare opportunity for a more thorough analysis, they wrote."

"Non-cognitive skills and character competencies have as much of an effect on success as academic skill, researchers from the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution conclude in a study released today."

"Federal officials and health experts unveiled a new school health model this week that incorporates "whole-child" elements—like school climate issues, student engagement, and community involvement—alongside components of the more traditional coordinated school health model that has been widely used since it was introduced in 1987."

Happy New Year, readers! I look forward to continued conversations with you in 2015.

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